LinuxReaders

Most time of the day I surf through many web sites & come across many interesting articles / posts which can be useful in future. Like every web user I bookmark all these URLs. I use both Xmarks & Mozilla Weave to keep bookmark backedup, as bookmark is really important for me I do not wish to take any chance to loose it.

Today by mistake I lost one of my bookmark folder. Ofcouse, I wasn’t worried as I had multiple backup on Xmarks. All I had to do was to restore old backup from Xmarks. Rather restoring old backup from Xmarks I started looking for alternatives to recover bookmarks. While searching I endedup on this link which describes how to recover lost Firefox bookmarks without using any additional extension.

* In Firefox 1.5 and above, five daily bookmark backup files are saved in the bookmarkbackups folder, located in the Firefox profile folder. You must recover one of these five backups before they are overwritten by newer versions.

* In Firefox 2 and below, and in other Mozilla browsers, bookmarks are stored in the file “bookmarks.html”, located in the profile folder. There is also a “bookmarks.html” file in the program folder, but this one is only a template and does not hold your bookmarks. To make sure you have the right file, you can open the bookmarks.html file or any bookmark backup file using “File -> Open File” from the menu (see above).

* Starting in Firefox 3, bookmarks are stored in the places.sqlite file and bookmarks*.html files are only used for importing and exporting. As of Firefox 3 Beta 5 bookmarkbackup files are stored in JSON format.

As per above description all you need to do is to restore old .json files from Bookmarks => Organize Bookmarks => Import and Backup => Restore => select date (to restore backup of that particular date).

This is how you can recover your Bookmarks from JSON files.

In case you wish to restore JSON file of another computer / profile.

Copy JSON file from source location as mentioned below.

JSON file location ~home/$USER/.mozilla/firefox/$PROFILE/bookmarkbackups/

To find profile path cat ~home/$USER/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini

To restore

Bookmarks => Organize Bookmarks => Import and Backup => Restore => Choose File..

Resource

Latest Firefox is released

As we explained in our previous article the benefit of using tar package. If you are using TAR package all you have to do is to click on check for updates and you get latest one running without waiting for your favorite distro to release package.

Release Notes

For my normal web surfing I prefer to use pre-released firefox. I am not a developer, thus this is my way to contribute to firefox. While using I hardly face any problem but if there any crash I do send crash report.
Apart from this I always like pre-released firefox. This is when you can makeout performance / feature improvement.

If you wait for your favorite distro to release rpm / deb package, you might not get chance to use latest pre-release.
For mozilla products I prefer tar packages only, as in there is no installation required. All you have to do is to extract & run application.

Download firefox-3.7 latest built
Create Folder in your Home Directory e.g packages & Extract source package
Or
As a root, extract package in /usr/local/etc/ so that same will be accessible to other users on same computer. (recommended)

Add shortcut on panel (./firefox/firefox)

Start using it.

You might need to install compat-libstdc++ / libstdc++ rpm. otherwise you’ll not be able to run application

This is not only limited to pre-released packages. You can also use it for stable release, thus you can start using latest release as made available by mozilla rather waiting for new rpm / deb

Weave is one of the best application to Sync Bookmarks, password, form, history, tabs across multiple computers. Few months back, while searching for Bookmark sync for multiple computers I found Xmarks and started using it. Xmarks is good enough for bookmark & password backup. But when it comes to sync bookmark amongst computer there is intervention required. Whereas Mozilla Weave it does all automatically.

As a downside I am unable to make Firefox forget password for Weave (yes, there is option available in security. but I prefer entering password manually). I use weave & xmarks for syncing my office & home computer bookmarks. Many times I share my office computer with office colleagues, this is one of the reason I avoid saving password in Weave. Xmark is able to sync while closing browser, which is not the option with Weave. By default it synchronizes with server every 300 seconds. Xmark keeps multiple copies of sync data for accidental deletion / recovery.

I recommend to use both application together, weave can take care of seamless sync & Xmarks can be used to keep multiple backup of bookmark, passwords.

Download & Install latest plugin.

After installation you will be redirected to subscribe or signin. Enter your credentials to start sync with server.

On the left side, you’ll get options choose what to sync, you can define settings.

Click on sync now to get started

on every sync, you’ll notice your id & circle on right side of status bar.

After Firefox3.5 (“Shiretoko”) is released, the next version of Firefox will be developed under the project name “Namoroka”. The Firefox version number will be “3.6″ and the Gecko Platform version number will be “1.9.2″. The release will be shipped as a minor update to users, replacing Firefox 3.5 (“Shiretoko”).

Namoroka is to be an incremental release, building upon the success of Firefox 3.5.

Namoroka will focus on Performance AND Personalization & Customization

As per available information Release Candidate is expected in October 2009.

Download latest Alpha release & participate in testing.